Engaging "Socially" with Customers

Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Snapchat, and other social tools create myriad opportunities to engage consumers, amplify product messages, discover trends and influencers, build brand awareness, and take action on customer requests and recommendations. Social media monitoring helps marketers and business owners understand more about buyers' likes, dislikes, and complaints concerning products, additional products or product modifications customers want, and how people are talking about a brand $($positive or negative sentiment$).$

Instagram is one of the fastest$-$growing social networking platforms, with more than one billion active monthly followers, and is especially popular with younger Internet users. It is a powerful tool for business, enabling brands to get quick messages and photos to target audiences, engage with them, and build closer relationships. Users can interact with other Instagram users by following them, being followed by them, commenting, "liking," tagging, and private messaging. Instagram has about $25$ million registered business accounts and $1$ million monthly active advertisers who use sponsored ads to reach more people on this platform. Instagram generated $$20$ billion in ad revenue in $2019.$

With over $86$ million followers, Nike is one of the most popular Instagram business brands. Nike posts a mix of content, including celebrity$-$endorsed and lifestyle$-$based performance shots using still imagery, animated imagery, and video to define "moments." Like many other companies, Nike has learned that its followers are not just buying their products, they are buying the lifestyle associated with those products. Nike continually promotes its products, but it does so via lifestyle$-$related storytelling.

Nike's mission statement is $"$To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world," amateur or professional. The Nike brand reflects the belief that people can achieve more by believing in more, and that average people can be empowered to feel like full$-$fledged athletes if they "Just do it$.\text{'}$ Many Nike Instagram posts inspiring followers to make a jump shot or run on the beach evoke this emotive motivation, earning the brand up to $500,000$ "likes" per post.

Although engaging with customers via social media has benefited many companies, not all have achieved the results they hoped for. Lush UK$,$ noted for its vegan and animal cruelty$$free$,$ all$-$natural face, bath, and body products, environmentally friendly packaging, and captivating Instagram posts, decided in the spring of $2019$ to close its social media accounts. Lush claimed that social media was actually inhibiting its ability to engage with fans. Lush had massive followings on Instagram $(570,000$ followers$),$ Twitter $(200,000)$ followers$),$ and Facebook $(400,000$ followers$).$

In an Instagram post, Lush stated that it was tired of catering to constant social media algorithm changes to keep in front of followers. The company did not want to pay to appear in newsfeeds, nor did it want to limit conversations to a few places. Instead it preferred to open up conversations with customers via live chat on its website, email, and telephone. "Social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly....We want social to be more about passions and less about likes," Lush stated.

Experts note that companies have recently had to struggle more to get in front of audiences because many social media platforms have stopped ordering news feeds chronologically in favor of algorithms that order content by "relevancy." Many businesses have been frustrated with their posts not being shown to users. They suspect the social media platforms are making these changes to encourage more brands to pay for ads as a way of increasing impressions $($number of times an ad is served$).$

Did Lush make the right decision? Will ignoring social media work for Lush? How much value is social media really driving? Can Lush succeed in creating a meaningful community outside social media? Many companies are watching closely for answers.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

$1.$ Assess the management, organization, and technology issues for using social media technology to engage with customers.

$2.$ What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?

$3.$ Give an example of a business decision in this case study that was facilitated by using social media to interact with customers.

$4.$ Should all companies use social media technology for customer service and marketing? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?